Experimental analysis of the flow dynamics in the suction chamber of an external gear pump

Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (TRPIV) has been used to investigate the flow inside the suction chamber of an external gear pump where the movement of the fluid through the pump is maintained by the rotation of the gears. The main purpose of this paper is to study the characteristics of the complex flow pattern of this pump system in order to help in improving its total performance. The applied experimental techniques establish a method that allows visualising the flow inside the gear pump with a high rotational velocity system. Small micro air bubbles have been used as flow seeding. The images have been processed using domestic PIV software that uses specific aspects of the TRPIV technique. Instantaneous and phase-locked ensemble average fluid motions have been obtained for different gear pump rotational velocities to investigate the turbulence effect of rotating gears to the system.

[1]  J. Nogueira,et al.  Local field correction PIV, implemented by means of simple algorithms, and multigrid versions , 2001 .

[2]  A. Vernet,et al.  Numerical simulation of turbulent flow in the suction chamber of a gearpump using deforming mesh and mesh replacement , 2010 .

[3]  P. J. Gamez-Montero,et al.  Analysis of the turbulence in the suction chamber of an external gear pump using Time Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry , 2008 .

[4]  Detlev L. Wulff.  PIV Measurements in Pumps , 2006 .

[5]  Markus Raffel,et al.  Particle Image Velocimetry: A Practical Guide , 2002 .

[6]  Ronald J. Adrian.  Laser techniques and applications in fluid mechanics : proceedings of the 6th international symposium, Lisbon, Portugal, 20-23 July 1992 , 1993 .

[7]  Richard Dearn.  The fine art of gear pump selection and operation , 2001 .

[8]  R. Adrian.  Twenty years of particle image velocimetry , 2005 .

[9]  Mark P. Wernet,et al.  Development of digital particle imaging velocimetry for use in turbomachinery , 2000 .

[10]  Adrian Spencer,et al.  Correcting for sub-grid filtering effects in particle image velocimetry data , 2005 .

[11]  R. Codina,et al.  A finite element method for the solution of rotary pumps , 2007 .

[12]  Domingo Santana,et al.  Accuracy and time performance of different schemes of the local field correction PIV technique , 2002 .

[13]  Nao Ninomiya,et al.  The 10th anniversary of journal of visualization , 2007, J. Vis..

[14]  J. Nogueira,et al.  Limits on the resolution of correlation PIV iterative methods. Fundamentals , 2005 .

[15]  Kuo Jao Huang,et al.  Kinematic flowrate characteristics of external spur gear pumps using an exact closed solution , 2009 .

[16]  R. Adrian.  Particle-Imaging Techniques for Experimental Fluid Mechanics , 1991 .

[17]  Wood P.E. Gregory.  External gear pumps for accurate and reliable metering duties , 2006 .

[18]  H. Iyoi,et al.  χ-Theory in Gear Geometry , 1983 .

[19]  C. Willert,et al.  Digital particle image velocimetry , 1991 .

[20]  D. Hart.  Super-resolution PIV by recursive local-correlation , 2000 .

[21]  Noah D. Manring,et al.  The Theoretical Flow Ripple of an External Gear Pump , 2003 .

[22]  J. Nogueira,et al.  Data validation, false vectors correction and derived magnitudes calculation on PIV data , 1997 .